What happens in a world where everything is “racist”? | Brendan O’Neill

I think there is a tendency to see wokeness as a joke and you know we tend to think of it as the ideological exuberance of young kids on campuses bluehead kids you know a bunch of idiots will grow out of it eventually but I think it's becoming increasingly clear that wokeness is an incredibly serious threat to our [Music] [Applause] [Music] societies I'm Tom Switz I'm the ex Ive director of the center for independent studies and for those of you who have not attended a CIS event uh we're a public policy research organization that's based on uh mcquire Street in the city and we're dedicated to tackling our nation's greatest challenges and we do this by producing work that Pro promotes our core classical liberal values so we believe PL passionately in promoting Economic Opportunity for all healthy in institutions of Civil Society education reforms that help improve Teaching Standards and schools outcomes particularly at primary and secondary level uh reforms in indigenous areas particularly in remote communities and I think this is important for an evening like tonight just as it was for Constantine kissen a few weeks ago we are passionately committed to defending our Western liberal cultural heritage and as a result we're strong critics of those counselors and they're predominantly on the left side of the ideological Spectrum those who seek to strangle debate suppress ideas and seek to standardize opinion and that brings us to this evening's guest speaker Brendan O'Neal uh from 2007 to 2021 he was the editor of spiked magazine and has since been its Chief political writer I think it's fair to say Brendan's an old Marxist but he's been mugged by reality and as a result as Margaret Thatcher would put it he's now one of us and with that please welcome Brendan O'Neal thanks Tom thank you very much hello everyone um in February 2022 the same week that Russia was invading Ukraine Britain's Security Services were having a really high level discussion about pronouns and the importance of using people's preferred pronouns uh whether it be he him she her they them Zer whatever it might be Britain Security Services said it's really important to use the right pronouns because otherwise members of the military who identify as non-binary or whatever might feel deeply offended this literally was taking place in the week that Russia was invading Ukraine at the same time Britain Security Services were discussing the problem of white privilege and the importance of members of the security services and the military forces more broadly in terms of acknowledging their white privilege and admitting that they enjoy white privilege and it gets even worse the security services in the week that Russia was invading Ukraine were talking about the problem of gendered language and advi Advising against using words like Manpower and even words like strong and grip because these are male patented language terms that could cause upset amongst female members of the security services and more fragile members of the security services if you put this in a satire people would accuse you of going too far you know Russia is sweeping across Europe and Britain security service are saying don't say the word strength don't say the word grip uh you might offend someone so you have this strong man moving into Europe uh trying to conquer one of the largest countries in Europe this strong man throwing his weight around while the British uh military forces are saying don't use the word strength as a snapshot of our times it is really extraordinary and then a few months later while uh Putin was really making inroads into Ukraine uh the Navy the British navvy had a discussion about Neo pronouns so this goes even a step further than pronouns these are the new pronouns where people basically invent their own pronouns and the Navy said that you should always use the pronoun someone wants you to use even if it doesn't make sense to you a few months after that the head of the British army said that you should avoid using masculine naming conventions including words like bles and guys so he said that if you go into a meeting and say all right guys how's it going that be offensive to some people so you should stop saying it also you shouldn't use the word godsman you shouldn't use the word Rifleman apparently these are deeply offensive terms and you think then think back a couple of years earlier than all of this and I remember the time that the British army put up a poster saying we want to recruit snowflakes that is literally what the poster said it had an image of a young man looking a bit fragile and he said we want to uh recruit snowflake and it said basically the argument was snowflakes play a very important role in our society they're very sensitive they're emotionally open and we want to be a more sensitive sensitive and an emotionally open force and therefore we want you in our ranks see add all this together and what you have is a situation where military forces around the world are rearming themselves invading countries or threatening to invade countries in the case of china and Taiwan or carrying out horrendous attacks like the 7th of October pogram in Israel all of these strange and curious and horrible military actions are taking place and the British military is concerning itself with what language to use why you should avoid talking about strength and why you should always use the right pronouns I think it's a snapshot of one of the key problems we face today which is the moral disarmament of the West now we often talk about whether we are sufficiently prepared in terms of military strength for standing up to the various threats around the world but I think the key problem we face today is not necessarily military disarmament or physical disarmament or not having the right equipment to fight Wars should they come our way but moral disarmament the uh pushing aside of the core values and core ideas that once held our societies together and the Embrace of a woke ideology that is incredibly damaging I think to the confidence of our institutions and the confidence of the people in our societies I think there is a tendency to see wokeness as a joke and you know we tend to think of it as the ideological exuberance of young kids on campuses bluehead kids you know a bunch of idiots will grow out of it eventually but I think it's becoming increasingly clear that wokeness is an incredibly serious threat to our societies it is fundamentally a process as I say of moral disarmament Where We Are stripping away the values and the virtues that once defined who we are as a society and as a people and in the process laying ourselves open to the threats that we should actually be talking about encountering so leave aside to for one second the military let's also talk about the church the church of England very old established institution recently had a discussion on using gender neutral pronouns for God apparently it's really bad to refer to God as he and you should instead refer to him I almost said him I'm sorry sorry god um you should refer to it I don't know them apparently they them is a preferable this was a serious discussion at the general Synod in the Church of England using gender neutral pronouns in order to have more inclusive language in order to avoid male naming conventions even God cannot escape the ravages of political correctness even he has to be laid waste to by the Juggernaut of woke ideology think about also what the Church of England did after the killing of George Floyd and the black lives matter riots that followed the Archbishop of Canter Justin wiby said us white Christians must repent of our prejudices this kind of demand for an exorcism of the Apparently original sin of racism that infects the Church of England and to that end the Archbishop said that all 12,500 Parish churches of the Church of England and all 42 cathedrals would be scoured for any mention of slavery and colonialism and all of it would be purged any statue or Bust or painting anything that had any link whatsoever to the wrongs of British history he said it will all have to come down it's like the French revolutionaries of old going into churches and tearing them apart although this time the church is doing it to itself this time the Revolutionary is Justin wellby demanding an exorcism of par churches and cathedrals in order to cleanse them of the sins of the past we see the same thing in um museums the Natural History Museum recently published an article asking are natural history museums inherently racist and of course its answer to that question was yes we often this is the natural history museum in London one of the greatest museums in the world they said we have our Orin origins in colonialism and the glorification of Empire and we must ask for forgiveness for this fact fact the Natural History Museum has also considered taking down its Darwin exhibitions and maybe even removing the famous statue of Darwin at the entrance to the museum because the ship on which Darwin famously sailed to the gpus islands was a colonial ship therefore he is linked to colonialism therefore he is evil cast him out bin him cover him up hide him away even the greatest science scientist ever arguably cannot escape the ravages of political correctness and the Juggernaut of wokeness other museums have completely taken down whole exhibitions that they think are problematic so the welcome collection in London which is a superb Museum devoted to the history of medicine it took down its whole exhibition about the history of health because it promotes a version of medical history that is based on racist sexist and ablest theories and language so the whole thing is gone no one will ever see again the pit Rivers Museum in Oxford really superb Museum removed the shrunken heads that it used to exhibit it had these shrunken heads from the ancient peoples of Ecuador and Peru it had them there for 80 years they were on display all the time they were without question the most fascinating exhibit in the pit Rivers Museum who doesn't want to see a shrunken head from some ancient tribe they are absolutely fascinating documents of the past they're gone now they're in the storage room Gathering dust because apparently it is inappropriate for the largely white owners of the pit Rivers Museum to exhibit such an ancient uh artifact from a long gone people um other museums have just completely shut themselves down the Royal British Columbia Museum in can Canada closed itself the whole museum and it said it was doing so in the service of decolonization so it was decolonizing itself out of existence and it was replaced by a safer more inclusive provincial Museum that would show different things to the old Museum that had closed itself down this new museum by the way cost $789 million to build uh that's how insane uh our Elites have become when they are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these public performances of self flagellation which is essentially what we are talking about everything these days everything from the past all the great things from the past are being reimagined as problematic racist overly male overly white and they are being purged from our society so let's go beyond the military the church and the museums and let's look at other aspects of culture Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is now frequently described as racist there is a new movement of Music critics in the United States in particular let's say Beethoven's Fifth is a symbol of white male superiority and importance so there is a movement to stop playing this Symphony so much because it is to White Shakespeare is racist now of course I'm sure we all know that by now the guardian recently published an article with a headline I'm not saying Shakespeare is an anti-black racist but real Cliffhanger there I bet you can't guess what the guardian's answer was to that question um the new Oxford Shakespeare collection of his plays this is a new Oxford good collection so pretty official pretty legitimate opened with a chapter asking is Shakespeare racist and the answer of course is yes he's racist we know that now that's how his he is treated Opera is racist naturally the New York Times recently thundered that Opera can no longer ignore its race problem apparently it's too white it's has too many white people on stage too many white people in the audience and that's a terrible thing uh teaching the cannon is racist apparently expecting students to read Shakespeare cha and Milton all of whom are white men is racist it is uh putting too much pressure on ethnic minority students to engage with so-called white culture and there are a whole sthe of uh decolonized movements on campuses in America and Britain and other parts of Europe and in Australia too which want to decolonize syllabuses in order to remove all these dead white males all these Matic authors at Yale University the decolonized movement said it is unacceptable that a Yale student considering English might only read white male authors and the white male authors they were talking about were Shakespeare chorer and Milton now it's my view if you're studying English at Yale you should be reading Shakespeare cha and Milton as a bare minimum so I think we have to move beyond the idea that wokeness is just funny I mean it is funny let's be honest about it it is funny to watch these kids running around saying I'm they them and dying their hair all sorts of strange colors and it is amusing and political correctness gone mad is one of my favorite things to uh read about and look into and find the craziest stories out there but it's also more serious than that we are living through what can only be described as a process of decivilization the unraveling of all the great gains of our societies or the great culture of our society and the problematization of these things as too male too white too oldfashioned and not really appropriate or fitting to the modern era it's a vast project of the undoing of civilization that's what we're currently living through even though at times it just looks to us like something funny and ridiculous and uh weird but I think under the surface of that something really bad is happening and I was thinking recently that if you think about two of the most popular movements among young people in particular it really does tell you how much of a crisis our civilization is in so amongst young people there are two very popular radical movements right now one is as I've already mentioned decolonization the cleansing of history and the cleansing of syllabuses and the cleansing of museums of anything problematic from the past so that decolonization on one side and then the other movement popular amongst young of course is the green movement climate change alarmism the hysterical idea that billions of people will shortly die from the heat death of the planet you know the Greta thumberg view of the world St Greta with her biblical prophecies about uh the end times that we will soon face if you look at those two movements it's really interesting because what they represent is a hatred for the past and a fear of the future so that feeling of extraordinary and profound alienation from one's own history where you come to hate your own history to hate the old authors the old museums the old churches everything about your past you are encouraged and in some cases educated to hate and at the same time you fear the future you dread what is coming down the road you fear the heat death of billions of people you behave like lots of teenagers these days and you think you have no future that's Greta thunberg's slogan we have no future you've stolen our future from us and just think about the consequences of a world in which the young in particular hate the past and Fear the Future what that means is they they live in a kind of limbo a kind of limbo of now the only thing that matters is right now this kind of prison of presentism that they live in this Purgatory of the present where they are disconnected from the past and they live in utter dread of the future that I think is is a really terrible experience and it is absolutely anti- civilization because civilization surely means understanding your past and trying to draw the gains of the past through to the Future civilization fundamentally is about feeling a connection with where your Society comes from and aspirations and optimism about where your Society can go it's about being in a relationship with history and having dreams of the future that is what civilization is civilization is a sense uh of permanence that's what Kenneth Clark said in his great TV series from 1969 I recommend you all watch it it's on YouTube he said civilization is a sense of permanence he said it it seems to me that civilized man must feel that he belongs somewhere in space and time that he consciously looks forward and consciously looks back that is what a civilized man a civilized woman is someone who has a feeling of permanence a feeling of rootedness a knowledge of history and uh hopes for the future that has been completely robbed from The Young in particular who now live in this permanent limbo of dread for what came before them and Dread at what might come later and that is in fundamentally the end of civilization and I think that's the problem we face right now when we look at woke us and we have that temptation to laugh at it and make fun of it but under the surface something very serious is happening when you're military won't even say words like strength and grip when your museums are hi hiding away artifacts when Shakespeare has been added with loads of trigger warnings in case you get upset by his racist ideas when the universities are overrun by academics who teach kids to hate the history of the West you can really see that this is far more than a bunch of kids drunk on their own self-importance these are the institutions of the West themselves destroying themselves in order to appease what they view as the original sins of Western civilization and that's the current situation we find ourselves and I want to bring it to an end by just asking how bad this can get and I think we've seen how bad it can get in the past 6 months since the 7th of October because what we've had since the Hamas prgram of the 7th of October is younger Generations taking the side of Hass and we have seen that especially on campuses we used to think that education would be the great guard against the bited ignorances of the past apparently not these are some of the most educated kids in the world some of the most privileged kids in the world and they're out there every day chanting in favor of Hamas they were confronted with a clash between a Democratic Jewish nation and an anti-semitic Army that had just carried out the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust and they took the side of the latter that's the seriousness of the situation we find ourselves in and if you look at what's happening at Colombia University right now where they've set up a Gaza solidarity encampment and just look at the swiftness with which that turned from being a supposedly Pro Palestine Gathering to being a hot bed of bigotry a hot bed of open racism a hot bed of hatred and cont tempt where Jews have been shouted at uh where uh people there's one plard which has a message for Israel which it refers to as the scum of Nations the pigs of the earth so this is how dangerous the process of D civilization can be because if you educate the young to hate Western Civilization you drive them into the arms of civilization's enemies you drive them towards barbarism and all they left with is the law of barbarism which they see as providing I guess a kind of cheap moral thrill in this awful post civilizational limbo that they live in when there is nothing else that really connects with them and when they've been alienated from everything in their own Society what they look for is that cheap Rush of something that feels real and positive and angry and they latch onto it as they did with 7th of October and if you educate the young and encourage the young and in incite the young to hate the West you can't then Fain surprise when they take the sides of Hamas after it attacked the West in the shape of our key Ally in the Middle East so that's how serious I think the moral rot of Western Society has become I know this is a depressing message so uh we can go back to laughing at some of the uh wokeness gone mad as well I'm more than happy to do that but at the same time I do think we need a very serious Reckoning with the process of decivilization and more importantly than that and all out defense of the great gains and wonders of Western Society in order that we might finally Liberate the Young from the limbo that they live in and make them see that our societies are far better than the regressive societies they are currently aligning with but in order to do that we need a bit more confidence a bit more courage we need to stop hiding away artifacts we need to stop censoring male conventional language we need to give the military a shake we need to give the institutions a shake and we need to recover the universities from the strangle hold of wokeness and once we've done that maybe finally we can Liberate the Young from the horrors that they currently live through thank you how about you but I'm pretty depressive should be you remind me of uh basil faulty you remember that wonderful 197 7 sitcom called Faulty Towers and there's an episode where I mean you remember you're British there's a there's a uh there's uh the hotel inspector comes into Faulty Towers and uh complains about the hotel saying the refrigerators aren't working there's evidence of smoking in the kitchen there's two dead pigeons in the water tank blah blah blah blah to which basil faulty replies otherwise okay yeah I mean there is something to be grateful for surely in this story Technologic advances medical advances cancer patients have a much better chance of uh surviving than they did 10 50 years ago you think about the cleaner environment um it's not all that Doom and Gloom is it oh no so it's a real it's it's it feels like a contradictory process sometimes because in some ways this is the best time ever to be alive yeah uh thanks to the Industrial Revolution shout out to the Industrial Revolution and all the things that sprung from that um all the things that we are encouraging to hate as well by the way and and there is now a z Rand I think called it an anti-industrial Revolution and you have everyone from Boris Johnson to Greta thunberg saying the rot of climate change started as soon as you know the spinning wheel the J spinning jenny started going and the Machine started going so there is even hostility to those leaps forward but no this is in some ways it's the best time ever to be alive um we live longer yeah life expectancy life expectancy is longer as you say um disease is is better far better treated now than in the past um our lives are more comfortable Millions upon millions of people in China and India are been lifted out of Absolut poverty and are being thanks to capitalism by the way thanks to capitalism and they're being delivered into something approaching comfort and wealth the kind of lives that we enjoy and I'm in favor of all of that but at the same time as we admire those technological advances and those medical advances which do carry on uh regardless of the culture that I've been describing um it is essential that we defend the virtues of Western Civilization because you do ask yourself how much longer can even those developments take place if we turn our backs on the societies that made those developments possible so unless we defend the kind of foundational culture I think even some of those things could be lost well welcome back to Australia I think Brendan's last time here in the country was certainly before the pandemic we did an event together with Jeremy Sam our former colleague who's now at the financial review I think in late 2018 on your last book on woke um I know you've only been in the country for a few days maybe the best part of a week but have you noticed anything different about post lockdown Australia yeah Australia's going really woke I used to think Australia was immune to this stuff because every this is my sixth visit to Australia I love coming to this country um and one of the things I loved about it when I first came many many years ago is that Australians seemed more immune to all the crap that had washed over Britain in particular particular and also America uh you know there was much more climate change skepticism for example much more skepticism of the idea that we're all going to go to hell remember Tony abber won a landslide election on this issue yeah so there was much more skepticism of that there was much more willingness to to laugh in the face of the kind of paced um woke ideologues you know you always thought of the Aussie as a person who just wouldn't put up with that stuff um and that's still out there of course but at the same time I do think you Australia is finally surrendering to this culture and it's like it always starts in California and it moves across America then it comes to Britain and we say okay come on bring it on and then it goes to Europe sometimes it hits a a block in France because they're not really into this stuff and they're like no no no we don't want this uh but then it generally moves across Europe and then it eventually gets to Australia it's interesting that one of the things that hit a stumbling block in Britain um was the trans ideology yeah so you know that's kind of another basically Californian idea that has moved across the world the idea that you can have a penis and be a woman um but in Britain for interesting historical political cultural reasons a lot of people have said no we don't want this okay but in uh October of last year as I'm sure you know this country had a referendum on what was called The Voice to Parliament and the corporates the celebrities the unions the government of the day both state and federal uh among other groups passionately supported the most of the media they passionately supported the voice and it failed uh cat catastrophically it was something like a 6139 vote in favor of people uh who had probably nearly onethird maybe maybe you know yeah about onethird of the financers that the yes campaign had they had the corporates and the philanthropists so doesn't that show that ordinary Australians and this was a point that our mutual friend Fraser Nelson the editor of the London spectator who spoke at CIS at our consilium last October he made the point in the Daily Telegraph in the UK that this was the first referendum in the world on identity politics which you've written a lot about and it failed isly so doesn't that show that Australia might be immune to this oh listen the referendum result on The Voice was one of my favorite political events of recent times it was I I think I can say most people in the room yeah I was on I was on tender hooks waiting for that result thinking you know please keep the brexit spirit going vote against the establishment and you did you know on steroids even more with higher um percentage than even we did with brexit no that's great that's wonderful and in fact I was talking about it here recently I think there are even politically there is a lot for us to be happy about because there is currently a populist Revolt sweeping much of the western world we saw it with the vote for brexit I like to think of the vote for brexit as the first uh strike in this populist Revolt uh the vote for Trump uh I'm not particularly I'm not on uncomplicated fan of trump but I do recognize that the vote for him was a screwy you to The Establishment and then of course there's the farmers Revolt in Europe where farmers are rising up against Net Zero policies other populist parties have gained power in Europe and I I see all these populist revolts as necessary correcti against the hysteria of the elites and Ordinary People are essentially saying even if they're not saying it out loud they're saying the establishment's Gone Bananas they want to ra ize the Australian Constitution they want to stop Farmers from making food they want to uh keep Britain chained to Brussels I think a lot of ordinary people are looking at what the establishment is doing and saying enough is enough so that is something absolutely to be hope your critics would say that the so-called populists whether they're on the right or the left but they're predominantly on the right in Europe uh that they offer simplistic solutions to fantastically complicated problems and a classic casing point is trade protectionism trade protectionism is is rising in these countries particularly in the United States but as we've argued at CIS over the last 50 years free trade is the best way to improve living stand is not protectionism well you know I they do say that they do say that these are very complicated issues and Simple Solutions don't work I think that often comes across as basically saying leave it to us experts I'm not saying you're saying that but other people absolutely have been saying that you know um you plebs you don't understand the how profound round and complicated these issues are um and you keep you keep using the simplistic cudle of populism to give us a beating and you're just going to make everything worse I find that a very anti-democratic argument I actually think uh the chartist made this point the chartist was a great movement for the right of workingclass men to vote in England in the 1840s and they once published This brilliant piece in which they said look we're not saying that the ordinary man in the street is is as clever just as good as a priest or a prince in terms of determining what should happen in society we're saying he's better and the reason he's better is because he lives in society in a way that these people who are very removed often don't and I think that's as true today if not more true uh as it was in the 1840s ordinary people live in society they know what the problems in society are they know what doesn't work they know what why inflation is a problem why the trains aren't running on time they know they experience these things in a way that the rarified elites who are increasingly distant from The Real World don't so I am more of a Democrat than I've ever been and I do think the Democracy provides the best push back against some of this W stuff again I think that resonates with most of our members question for you about cancel Culture Your critics would say that public attitudes about various socio and cultural matters have changed dramatically in recent times and they would say that once marginal groups are starting stting to gain equal footing in society and so they increasingly dominate Western narratives about our past and present and people like you are wrong to not just resist those Trends but to rate to but to berate these people as wers as subscribers to left woke Orthodoxy what's wrong with that argument that public attitudes have shifted across a wide range of sociocultural matters and the once marginalized groups are starting to get equal footing what's wrong with that argument you I hear that quite a lot people say if you criticize political correctness or wokeness people think you want to go back to the 1950s when women were in the kitchen and uh gay people didn't have rights and you know things were just much more traditional for me it's the precise opposite the reason I criticize political correctness is because I think it threatens precisely those Progressive leaps forward if you look at the trans ideology for example this is a movement which is riding rushod over uh women's sex-based rights and it invol involves men invading women's spaces and men taking jobs that were traditionally reserved for women and look at Joe Biden's recent redefinition of uh sex and gender in Title Nine which basically means that boys in Co colleges will be able to uh take part in women's sports that's the end of women's sports these are attacks on women's rights which are part of the progressive values that came up in the 50s and 60s and70s you see the same thing with gay rights which I think are being fundamentally undermined by something like the trans ideology we recently had the cast review in Britain which said that a lot of the young boys and girls going to have gender reassignment are basically gay and the cast review says how have we ended up in a situation where Society is carrying out medical experiments on gay kids so that to me is a reversal of some of those great uh uh inclusions of minorities into Democratic Society so I think what I refer to as wokers I see those people not as a threat to tradition as such but as a threat to uh the leaps forward that Society made in the 60s and70s which I think are now been undone well let me run a quote by you this is Eugene Robinson who's a pool to prize winning columnist at the Washington Post left liberal but he says quote woke is just an empty allpurpose insult hurled by conservative propagandists antivaccine fabulists lazy journalists and people who don't want to know our history and he makes the point that in the British context it's about drawing attention to the Perils of British colonialism in parts of Africa and the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia and in the Australian case it's about the plot of indigenous Australians after 1788 your response to Eugene Robinson um yeah I mean it's it the idea woke is not a perfect word that let's get that out of the way I think we need something that captures it's like one of the points I make in my book is that even cancel culture is not a perfect term CU what we're living it's too frivolous to describe what we're living through which is a the rise on Rise of an an extraordinary system of censorship and self-censorship primarily designed to punish people who have traditional views or conservative views or who value Western Civilization so it's a almost like an inquisition likee process we're living through so these terms like woke and cancel culture I don't think capture the depth of what is happening um but woke is useful shorthand and you know people will often say well Ordinary People don't know what you mean by wokeness everyone knows what you mean by wokness they have this really positive instinctive understanding of what that word means and why it's a problem absolutely when I speak to people around the UK up and down the country they know what woke means and they know that it doesn't mean you know banging the drum for the British Empire or wanting to go back to the you know to recolonize Africa they know it has nothing to do with that but it really is about defending the rights of ordinary people and ordinary communities not to be lectured to and finger wagged at by this but he he would say in response all he's doing is drawing attention to racism and social injustice that clearly did happen several decades ago I mean think of the Jim Crow laws in the United States and the fact that civil rights legislation didn't get pass in the United States until the mid-60s so he's saying that for a lot of African-Americans and perhaps other minorities they're still suffering from racism and social injustice that Legacy that's what he would argue yeah but you know one of the problems with wokeness or woke ideology or whatever the hell we're going to call this thing is that it has rehabilitated racial thinking that's one of the key problems with it it encourages us to think racially all the time you have to flatulate self flatulate if you're white you have to acknowledge your white privilege uh it treats black people as being these permanent victims of historical circumstance and social oppression in fact some of the uh parents rising up against wokeness in schools in America a lot of them are ethnic minority parents they're African-American parents they're Latino parents why they don't want their kids to be told that they're victims absolutely and that they will never succeed and that they are faced with structural oppression I should make this point that several CIA Scholars over the US and contributors to our research Anthony Dylan over there Warren mandine and of course the greatest Enterprises now Senator they've been making that point time and again over recent years about solidifying this notion of victimhood and the response from their critics is is just overwhelming hostility yeah you know wokeness and even something like the voice to Parliament here and other um ideas about re racializing Society or making everyone think racially that represents a an explicit counterrevolution against the ideas of someone like Martin Luther King and against some of those things that happened in the 60s which I think were very positive so you the UCLA the University of California Los Angeles for example they recently brought in a list of micro AG aggressions racial microaggressions things you shouldn't say because you might offend people and on this long list one of the things you shouldn't say is I don't see color I just think of people I take people as individuals that's basically what Martin Luther King said in his I Have a Dream speech that he wanted his children to be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin if he said that on a campus in America in the 21st century it's possible he would be found guilty of a racial microaggression and out so again that's another example of how this movement represents the the unraveling of not necessarily not just tradition although it does threaten tradition and I think tradition is sometimes very important to defend but it also represents an unraveling of some of the more recently uh developed ideas to do with Racial equality sexual equality gay equality and so on all of which I think are being just chiseled at all the way by this quite psychotic movement yeah I try to make your points although less elegantly and coherently in of all places a Sydney Morning Herald many years ago and one one letter writer to the herald obviously you this is the herald which is a bit like the guardian on steroids um but they they said this lady said why are gender Switzer why are gender pronouns now a pitch battle in the culture War um people are raised to believe it's only polite to call people what they prefer to be called she her they them whatever so why the outrage how would you respond to that that letter writer from the city morning arold you know I used to use people's preferred pronouns a few years ago and now I just don't I refuse to do it because um I'm all for being polite I'm all for trying to avoid to offend people unnecessary unnecessarily but I am not going to sacrifice my understanding of biology and reality and Truth just to validate someone's identity just not going to happen and um if you were the fact is if you were born male and you went through male puberty you're a man and if you if they dug up your body in 200 years time and cloned you guess what they would make a man you every every fiber of your being is male and there's no escaping that there is no escaping it so um you know and this is a really good example of the new authoritarianism because actually they say it's about politeness it's not about politeness it's about forced conformism they want you to take the knee literally to their identity and um I don't think that we should sacrifice our freedom to express the truth just to validate their eccentric identities that have no basis in reality and I think someone like JK Rowling is absolutely right to refer to these trans women as he because that is what they are and she is striking an extraordinary blow for reason and Enlightenment against this new movement that want prevailed in Scotland recently though didn't she yeah she is really making huge gains in this whole debate and um sure Scotland's a very liftwing country these days Scotland is run by the Scottish national party which is the worst political party in Europe and um the first minister of Scotland is humza yusf who is mental um and um he has passed this hate speech law which uh you could be imprisoned for seven years if you stir up hatred against uh certain uh minority groups now we all know that hatred these days can mean anything hatred can mean misgendering someone or criticizing Mass immigration whatever so this is a very tyrannical piece of legislation and um on the day that it was brought in there were thousands of complaints against JK Rowling by trans activists who basically want to see her imprisoned for telling the truth but what was really hilarious is that then there was she was overtaken by complaints against humza USF because he once gave a speech complaining about how white Scotland is so everyone was phoning in saying this this is a hate crime I'm really so the whole thing is is a complete sh blow blew up in his face and JK Ring's been Vindicated yeah and we should stress JK Rawling is not one of us is she logically JK Rowling I would probably disagree with her on 90% of things especially brexit she was very very anti- brexit um but you know what the way I see it is that the conflicts we face now are so much more profound than the conflicts of the past I think they're even more profound than brexit versus remain and I for me that was one of the big battles of our time I think and they're more profound than left versus right because what we face now is civilization versus anti-civilization reason versus unreason Truth versus lies these are the fundamentals of our society that are under threat so I would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with JK Rowling on this issue even if we disagree on everything one of those profound battles that you mentioned is is now a few weeks ago you took to the Australian newspapers opinion Pages uh to critique the ABC the Australian ABC Memo from journalists that lamented a pro-israel bias at the public broadcaster H this was over the coverage of the Gaza conflict and you made the point they make little distinction between a hostage and a prisoner and you conclude that the ABC memo quote provides a grim insight into the moral Decay at the national broadcaster tell us more yeah you know this was a memo I think it was signed by 200 or 300 people at the ABC and um they were basically saying the ABC is too pro Israel which is the funniest thing I've ever heard um but also that one of their examples was that you know to prove that the ABC is pro-israel is that they said Israel will off the ABC will often refer to the Israeli hostages in Gaza but they don't subsequently refer to Palestinian prisoners in Israel so one of the points I made is that if you you can't tell the difference between Jews who were kidnapped by a gang of cosmic racist Psychopaths on October 7th on October 7th and Palestinians who are have been gone through a process of trial and imprisonment for committing crimes and acts of terrorism then you have lost your moral bearings entirely if you can't deal you know that is and the fact that there are the fact that there are hundreds of people at the Abc who don't know the distance between the racist kid na of Jews and the legitimate imprisonment of people suspected or guilty of committing terrorism that right there tells you everything you need to know about the ABC and from that moment on I mean I never really trusted much that the ABC said but from that moment on you can't trust them at all what about the BBC the British public broadcaster the BBC is as bad and um you know I think how do you count for this well the BBC has become increasingly distant from the public it's supposed to be the public broadcaster but not only does it not understand the public it has contempt for the public so it will speak down to us it will treat us with as bunch of ignoramuses you know we're referred to as gamon I don't know if you have the word gamon here but it's a reference to working class and lower middle class people with red faces and you know the so they're the color of meat um the BBC uh views the public as gamon as pig meat as a bunch of idiots who have to be lectured to and told off all the time really came through during the co era when the BBC was just the uh you know the official channel of the lockdown tyranny and would not allow any criticism any descent just constantly pumped out this public these public information campaigns telling us to stay at home or else we'll kill people so that was a really good example of that's when the BBC really came into its um condescending element and it's been downhill since I I think you having worked at our ABC for the best part of a decade I I gave up the job late last year but I think the good public broadcaster journalist try to subject whatever guess they have to skepticism um but it is sometimes selective so for example you know if you get Sarah Ferguson on the ABC 730 which is like our Prime Time program or used to be at least it um she would subject Peter duton to a lot of really tough questions quite rightly however when she interviews a prime minister she goes soft and I think that's a problem with the public broadcaster but let me be the Devil's Advocate and subject you to some scrutiny over Israel you have quite right ly highlighted the anti-semitic remarks made by various people across the Western world including the greens MP from New Town Jenny Leon I think he wrote about this in the Australian and of course the black lives matter movement and a lot of those Palestinian protesters are genuinely anti-semitic it's quite evident from their from their um their signs and and from their language but there has been widespread criticism of Israel's military campaign in Gaza and yet if you follow many center right metor Outlets Outlets that we ourselves subscribe to and right for I think of the UK Telegraph The Wall Street Journal the Australian the Financial reviews Sky News Australia you will very rarely hear any criticism of the Israeli government the question I have for you is are we sometimes guilty of cancel culture um I don't think it's cancel culture I think you have to take a side and I'm on the side of the Jewish people that that's all there is to it and I'm against um these the anti-semitic Army that um slaughtered 1,000 people that's all there is to it and you know the thing is that um this I think a lot of the criticisms of Israel that we do see and I think increasingly we are seeing them from the right and in fact some American right- Wingers have gone batshit if I'm allowed to say that um over Israel you know Candi ens and people like that they've gone but most republicans in Congress supported the recent aid for Ukraine yeah sorry you but uh Israel yeah but that's true but there are others on the right who are becoming very anti-israel and the thing is that um I just find lots of this criticism of Israel's military campaign to be just this kind of luxuriant moralism coming from people in Western societies who've never had to fight for anything who don't understand what it is like to face an existential threat from a movement on your doorstep that wants to destroy your whole religion your whole country and your whole people we have no idea what that feels like what's more a movement that hides itself amongst Palestinian citizens because it doesn't give a damn about them so it's very difficult to Target them and then we have these kind of often young privileged very comfortable westerners who've never lifted a gun for anything and in fact polls show that they never would looking down their noses at Israel and saying how dare you fight this war what they're saying what they are fundamentally saying is that Israel should have done nothing after the 7th of October which basically means you Jews should let yourselves be killed that's what they're saying what's the big deal why are you overreacting it's a demand for the Jewish people to allow themselves to be attacked by anti-semites that is fundamentally what we're talking about here our critics would respond and say look at the language used by some of the members of prime minister n who's cabinet um fighting Human animals making Gaza a Slaughter housee erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth now this has been well documented these are Israeli leaders soldiers and entertainers about Palestinians and Gaza since the Hamas Terror attacks on October 7 how do you respond to them yeah these those are terrible words but it's not the official line and the official line is that Israel has the right to exist which I agree with and that it has the right to pursue the terrorists that unleashed the worst attack on it in its uh modern history but the thing is you know the the one thing I really dislike is the idea that you see everywhere these days that Israel has now killed more people than her Mass killed and therefore Israel is worse that is so morally illiterate there is no moral equivalence whatsoever between the intentional Slaughter of Jewish people on the basis of their race and the collateral damage that is an absolute horrible tragic consequence of every war in history there is no moral comparison between those two things and the war in Gaza is hell it's hell on Earth but who started this war Hamas who's refusing to end this war by returning the hostages and surrendering on Israel's terms Hamas the people responsible for the barbarism in Gaza is Hamas they knew this would happen and they are still saying that they will carry out more 7th of Octobers so if Israel were to lay down its arms its people would be slaughtered again and that to me is unacceptable we'll go to questions very soon please think of some put your hand up and segle we'll reach out to you I think we got one over there okay yeah yes sir yeah um I'm asking you to be a bit of a psychologist or psychiatrist um you've given us the examples of universities and museums in particular where intellectual rigor and critical thinking have simply become flabby and they haven't challenged rout and Branch at the in at the first instance where these idiotic ideas the transgender the yeah we've been through all the pronouns and so on what do you think is the psychology or I don't even know whether that's the right term where uh towers of intellectual rigor like our universities museums and so on have given in to dodgy arguments which have then taken wings and flowing and the results are as you just gave us what what's what's the intellectual flabbiness that won't stand up for more sort of coherent rigor in intellectual ideas well that's the million dooll question why and how is this all happening I think one idea I've always had a slight problem with is the idea of the March through the institution the idea that anio gr yeah the idea that you know these cultural marxists made a conscious decision to March through the institions I understand what people mean when they say that but I think the relationship is more that the institutions just threw their doors open and we're certainly seeing that now you know I think there is a tendency on sections of the right to see you know these kind of ideologically crazy young people as holding Society to Ransom but in fact it's the institutions that are just rolling over and saying come on in take down this artifact take down this statue rename this street erase this problematic author the institution are inviting it it's almost like this kind of sedom masochistic relationship you see it with Greta thumberg as well who screams at politicians you're destroying the planet and the politicians are like yes bring it on we love to hear this you know this criticism so there is this weird symbiotic relationship between young activists who hate the west and a West that hates itself so I think it does come down to the process of decivilization where the further that uh grows and develops the more that every institution faces the threat of being just reordered in a really bad way okay next question brandan um where do you see the hope uh how should we respond uh is our organizations like the alliance for responsible citizenship that Jordan Peterson and baron strad yeah is that is that part of the answer yeah sadly I missed Arc in London because I away at the time I think all of these ideas and institutions and get togethers are incredibly important um I I I have a slight problem with some people on our side of the discussion I guess um suddenly rediscovering Christianity um that you know you have the rise of the cultural Christian I understand what that means and I have no problem whatsoever with Christianity by the way I'm once a Catholic always a Catholic um but I do think that's not the sole solution to the problems we face and as well as defending Jude judeo-christian culture which is incredibly important we do have to also acknowledge the importance of the Renaissance the enlightenment the Scientific Revolution the Industrial Revolution there is so much more from Human I often feel like a magpie with human history I want to borrow from conservatism I want to borrow from even sorry Marxism radicalism tradition not postmodernism um not postmodernism I want to borrow from all the these strains in history which I think contributed something to get a good liberal education and yeah and then you know so I think going down one route and saying this provides the answers to the problems I think that's probably a mistake right now Bren and I was so fortunate I I went to University at Sydney in the early to mid 1990s and I had one professor and I found out later he was a bit of a lefty but you would never have known it he he gave these wonderful lectures and in the tutorials and seminars he would always encourage students to look at the three different schools of thought surround each question that history raised and it was a really you know it was a really good way of getting your head around the strengths of your opponents the weaknesses of your own side and just trying to be fair and look at all the schools of thought next question hello Carolyn Reed um we I think all everyone in the room can acknowledge the increase in wokeness in our society and the minine values that we all hold dear um I would also add to that that I've noticed a decrease in um freedom and Liberties I chose not to be vaccinated and I was appalled by the way I was treated um not just by my government but I will say by my fellow citizens um suddenly my body my choice um didn't mean anything anymore um I would question whether you see um this is random um I think if we been tracking everything since 9911 it has led to a increase in security and surveillance of our society um is it random or is there a more Sinister plan because I see a salami being very thinly sliced and I see our freedoms and Liberties being taken away I would suggest with the increase um uh the talk of a digital ID and I believe we have a central bank digital currency sitting in the um in the in the sidelines I think this is a plan I'd like to know your views on that please yeah I'm not sure it's a plan I I can see the temptation of thinking that this stuff is planned and sometimes it feels like it is and you know some people think there's this kind of New World Order based in Davos or somewhere kind of bringing in these rules um and there's some truth in that you know these are powerful people who get together and and in some cases tell us dictate what our lives will look like like but I don't think it's planned as such I think it's even scarier than that I think it is just this a dual process of society itself giving up on the idea of freedom and people in positions of authority uh instinctively exploiting that turn against freedom in order to push their own agenda so it's much more instinctive and free flowing and weird I think rather than being planned if it was planned it would be easier you could just find the people doing it and you know put them in jail say something worse put them in jail or get rid rid of them or some something so it's more complicated than that but I do think people are people are forgetting the importance of individual autonomy and the the importance of self-government if you are not in control of yourself by which I mean the government of your own body your own mind your own right to say what you think and to believe what you think then Freedom itself completely dies so the right of the individual to govern him or herself is absolutely essential to all of this okay next question sir uh good good evening David my name is David singer I can see the Hammers their agenda is to get rid of Israel and have that whole area occupied by only Palestinians now what exactly is do you believe is the end game for the work Society ah I don't I'm not sure they have an end game I don't I just think they are pushing as as far as they can push I think often they don't realize how destructive they're being um I think they don't appreciate uh the um how the extent to which they're undermining the core values and threads of society uh I sometimes think they're well-meaning even if the consequences of what they do are incredibly destructive you know the the road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that so I think it's um it can be hard to work out what their what their plan is but generally speaking I I think this is a kind of slightly amorphous movement it's a very curious movement and it's pushing a open doors as I said earlier and and that's why it's so important for us to close those doors and say sorry this is off limits Western Civilization we will defend this the rights of women we will defend those uh reason and Science and Truth we will defend those as well so it's it's down to us I think to put up a stop sign to this movement rather than asking why are they so powerful why are they always gaining ground okay we've got time for at least two more questions yes sir Brendan the rise of the administrative state where we see the force of law bypassing the Parliament and coming direct from bureaucrats I'm thinking uh most recently back in the UK the global disinformation index Outsourcing of uh right speak and I guess in Australia most recently uh e safety Commissioners that want to tell us what to think what can we do to push back against administrative force of law yeah there is nothing scarier to me than the idea of an e safety officer I find that terrfying it's entirely orwellian I think a lot of these movements government campaigns against disinformation the way I understand them is is the the Revenge of the establishment against the disobedient masses so it is not a coincidence at all that your e safety stuff has really ratcheted up after the vote against the voice to Parliament the exact same thing happened when we voted for brexit the exact same thing they started all these discussions about the problem of misinformation because they thought we were misled online that's that's the only way they could understand us voting for brexit same thing happened when Americans voted for Trump in 2016 huge discussion about the problem of online misinformation and of course the same thing happened during the covid era when you had the World Health organiz and others talking about an infodemic you know the pandemic of misinformation because some people were still going outside and breaking the rules and uh you know you have this idea now of um dissenting thought or alternative ways of thinking or just criticism being almost like a disease they want to crush that disease as well as kind of real physical viruses so I think um standing up against the crus Crusade against so-called misinformation is absolutely essential because often what they mean by misinformation is ordinary people who have the temerity to disagree with the elites that's what misinformation now means and we have to defend the right of people to be Miss to provide misinformation next question yes sir yes I firmly believe that in Western societies the silent majority is against all this kind of nonsense we saw that with the V voice referendum great that's right yeah but fundamentally isn't the problem that we have flabby politicians throughout the Western democracies who can't stand up to these sort of woke ideas won't stand up for fear of losing votes and until we get politicians who are prepared to stand up to this sort of stuff we're on a lost cause yeah I um yeah I I just think the political class is a loss cause I don't think it's I don't think they're going to help us um we might get new politicians coming through who uh are more in touch with Ordinary People a good example is ky benok in Britain our trade Minister who is um very critical of the trans ideology very critical of wokeness understands the importance of brexit so we are seeing some of those politicians coming through through but they are few and far between I think we have to rely on each other I don't think we can look to the establishment at all it really does come down to meetings like this think tanks like this community connections protests I guess podcasts everything all of this kind of alternative Universe of thought that is actually rising up and that's another thing to be optimistic about it's down to that I think to really push back against this kind of you at some of these podcasts and YouTube clips they've got very popular ratings oh yeah absolutely I mean they if you look at the ABC for example when they put a a video online just of basic debates or or or news stories I'll only get 5 10,000 but yeah you know the AL ative media is getting a lot of yeah well I was on uh The Joe Rogan podcast a couple of weeks ago and the the reach of things like that is extraordinary it's far outweighs the traditional media okay we got time for at least one more question yes sir yeah look this is a little bit of a follow on from that I think my impression in the last two generations at least since the 60s the general attitude of the elite to all kinds of protest movements has been appeasement there has been no philosophical defense mounted that it's been we'll appease them we'll seduce them with consumerism and we'll just absorb them into our affluent Western Lifestyles and now we're finding ourselves on very thin ice with people like you and others saying hang on it's time to mount a philosophical defense that hasn't been there for 60 years I'm interest in your perspective um yeah I think that's a good description of where we're at and philosophical defense is a good way to describe it that is absolutely what we need I think it's um I think what we have at the moment we live under establishments and a political class that has very little understanding of ordinary people that has cares very little for either their Economic Security or their cultural security so you have this pins movement where on the one hand they are instituting policies that are impoverishing people there is a huge problem with inflation there's a huge housing crisis there are people who are struggling to make ends meet if you look at the energy crisis in Europe people are switching off the lights they're choosing between heating or eating uh because of insane Net Zero policies that have really undermined their uh living standards you have the economic assault which is ideologically driven often and on the other side a cultural assault an undermining of the people's way of life what they believe their Traditions their cultures so this pins movement is really attacking people from both sides and that is what I think is fueling the populist Revolt alongside the philosophical defense and we probably need both of those things a kind of populist Sucker Punch to the elites alongside a real philosophical defense of the great gains of Western civilization and Brenan I'm so glad you just mentioned energy at the end because we at CIS are getting involved in the energy debate we have a terrific energy program uh that highlights among other things the the the process of decarbonizing the economy is not a cost-free exercise and you're seeing this backlash all across Europe and indeed in America with the decline of sales with EVs and you might be starting to see it here we're focused on nuclear energy for now though please join me in welcoming my colleague Emily Dy she is part of our intergenerational program and she'll wrap things up and do the vote of thanks please welcome Emily thank you Tom and thank you so much Brenan um one of the things that a recent speaker at the CIS said Constantine kissen that's really stuck with me is that we need to be able to speak freely in order to think well and so thank you Brennan for being willing to speak out for being here tonight for being controversial um offensive even as some might say um so really appreciate it um also big thank you for to Tom because I think as many of the people that attend a lot of events at CIS know Tom is one of those people that will get up on the stage and no matter what he thinks on an issue he's he'll push back and he tests ideas and asks tough questions so really appreciate that and having a really robust conversation which is what we're about at the CIS um and unlike Brennan I'm actually quite optimistic I don't think that my generation is born with blue hair and the and the hair dye has not sunk into our brain cells so I do think that good arguments and good ideas being put out there is the way to really be successful and to reach different Generations it's easy to be worried about somewhat frivolous ideas about woke ideology about concerns of the past as Brennon was mentioning um about colonization or about concerns of the future climate change um when life is easy but when things get hard um when housing prices go up when our education standards are falling um when things are impacting our daily lives I think that a lot of people are willing to listen to those ideas to see evidence and um I think that's where an organization like CIS really comes into to reach those younger Generations Reach people across the political Spectrum by having real evidence-based policy um so if that's something that you're about um I definitely encourage you guys to become a member and also to um sign up for our newsletters that you can find out about events so thank you every for decades CIS has been a fiercely independent voice working hard to promote sound liberal principles to be notified of our future videos make sure you subscribe to our Channel then click the notification Bell we rely solely on the generosity of people like you for donations to advance our classical liberal cause check out the links on screen now to see how you can get involved [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Centre for Independent Studies

Views: 53,256

Keywords: Centre for Independent Studies, CIS, AusPol, Australian politics, On Liberty, Classical Liberalism, freedom of speech, Liberal Policy, Classical Liberalist

Id: 6y7K26iwEmM

Length: 69min 55sec (4195 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2024